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Cold Crematorium

Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

József Debreczeni author Paul Olchvary translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Publishing:9th Jan '25

£9.99

This title is due to be published on 9th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Cold Crematorium cover

A lost classic of Holocaust literature translated for the first time - from journalist, poet and survivor József Debreczeni

When József Debreczeni arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, had he been selected to go 'left', his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the 'lucky' ones, he was sent to the 'right', which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps, ending in the 'Cold Crematorium' - the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die.

Debreczeni beat the odds and survived. Very soon he committed his experiences to paper in Cold Crematorium, one of the harshest and powerful indictments of Nazism ever written. This haunting memoir, rendered in the precise and unsentimental prose of an accomplished journalist, compels the reader to imagine human beings in circumstances impossible to comprehend intellectually.

First published in Hungarian in 1950 but never translated into English, this important eyewitness account finally takes its place among the great works of Holocaust literature.

'A literary diamond... A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi' The Times

'A masterpiece' New Statesman

A literary diamond – sharp-edged and crystal clear. A haunting chronicle of rare, unsettling power... A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi * The Times *
Meticulous and intelligent translation... A masterpiece * New Statesman *
In the timeliest possible way, it succeeds in restoring the Holocaust’s reality... Debreczeni writes with a cinematic clarity, a determination to make detail triumph over mass dehumanisation * Telegraph *
Astonishing… Debreczeni captures detail after harrowing detail * Guardian *
As immediate a confrontation of the horrors of the camps as I’ve ever encountered. It’s also a subtle if startling meditation on what it is to attempt to confront those horrors with words… Debreczeni has preserved a panoptic depiction of hell, at once personal, communal and atmospheric * New York Times *

ISBN: 9781784878887

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 15mm

Weight: 200g

256 pages